Zucchini Tuesday - Tart

The days are getting cooler so enough of zucchinis in salads, its time to cook. Earlier this week I decided on a light zucchini tart.

This recipe is adapted from one I found years ago in a Gourmet Traveller.  I don't know which issue as I cut the recipe out.

Zucchini and feta tart with roasted cherry tomatoes (*from the patch)
puff pastry

*3 zucchini, thinly sliced
200gm feta crumbled
black olives, cut into pieces
*thyme
finely grated rind of 1 lemon
1 clove garlic, crushed
parmesan cheese finely grated
cherry tomatoes
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp red wine vinegar

Line a lose bottomed fluted tart tin with puff pastry (I used 3 sheets of frozen pastry overlapping) and blind bake in the oven at 200c.

Combine zucchini, feta, thyme, garlic and lemon rind in a bowl, season with black pepper. Spoon into pastry case, lightly sprinkle top with parmesan and bake until the mix becomes golden.

Roast tomatoes in the oven marinated in red wine vinegar and olive oil.  Remove tart from the tin carefully. Place tomatoes on the top of the tart. Eat.

I think you could do endless varieties of this recipe, indeed this is already an adaptation of the original which used dill  instead of thyme and I added parmesan and olives.

I still have two zucchinis in my patch, one is producing and the other is a little too junior still.  I am hoping to have zucchini for a little while longer. Southerners - has your zucchini made way for the winter brassicas yet?  Northerners - what  varieties of zucchini / courgette are you planning to plant for your summer crop

Until next week - Love your zucchini.

Harvest Monday - 11th March 2013

With the weather cooling (slightly) and with a little added rain, I have had a little more produce to pick.
Delights this week have been the Minnesota Midget Rock melons.

They have been such performers, dealing with the heat and the lack of rain, I have decided to 'harvest' their seeds to re-plant next year.

I am also starting to get a decent picking of zucchinis (about time). Here are three that I have picked just the last couple of days, the good news is that more are on the way.

Amazingly, the radishes that were almost completely grazed off by the Wallaby have started to produce their rosy little swollen roots.

Other than this, my harvests have been mostly rocket, rocket and more rocket. I am not very good at remembering to take photos of the things I harvest, especially when they are herbs and saladings, so you will just have to have pictures of my plants instead, you can see where I have picked the rocket at least!

Baby beetroot leaves also for salads.

Basil -  not huge quantities, just tip pickings for salads and parsley, chives, garlic chives and thyme.



I am contributing this to Daphne's Monday Harvest. A collection of great produce will be posted there soon, when the earth turns a little more.

Potting up, moving out

My patch is pretty empty now. I have harvested the last of my savoy cabbages and beetroot and now the only things left in the patch are some herbs (mint, Vietnamese mint, thyme, chives, parsley), some flowers (poppies, lupins, the end of the violas and pansies) and some self-seeded tomatoes from last year's crop. I hope that the new residents will like what is left and feel excited about planting up their favourite things into the patch.

Everything that I would have in the ground at this time of the year has been raised in pots ready for the move.

I have these vegetables ready for the move:

• eggplants
• tomatoes 
• chillies 
• fennel
• spring onions
• zucchini

and these herbs:

• parsley - Italian and curled
• mint - Vietnamese and just mint
• basil
• sage
• dill
• thyme
• chives
• garlic chives
• marjoram / oregano - I never know which -  do you?
• rosemary
• lavender
• bay
• yarrow

and then there is some fruit:

•  Collette the finger lime (this is probably overly optimistic as I am not sure how she will handle the frosts!)
• the blueberries

I have cut some right back -  the chives and bay have received a big haircut today. Others have been staked, well watered and mulched over some time so they might be more tolerant of the drive. I hope that it will be a mild day the day we move.

I am hoping that they all survive and that the vegetables will settle into a new, no-dig  raised bed  which will be hastily constructed soon after arrival. The herbs I am likely to keep in pots for a while. And then there will be other things to get started  as soon as I get organised at the new place - beans, corn, pumpkin, rock melon, cucumber ...

I will be leaving behind my special, special espaliered lime trees and my fabulous lemon tree. These citrus plants have given such pleasure.

This final picture is of my last harvest - 3 savoy cabbages and some baby beetroot.

Bye my Sydney garden - friend and comforter.

Harvest Monday - 15th October 2012

I was silly... I posted about much of my harvest this week last Friday.

It was a Friday thing... a post work stroll thru the patch and the sort of ritual of picking that helps to soothe the working week away  - and it was such a good picking that I had to post about it then and there so plenty more produce shots there.

But to cover off  the whole week, last week I picked quite a nice stash of produce. Here it is.

• 1 main head of broccoli
• lots of broccoli side-shoots
• 2 big heads of cauliflower
• several bunches of new baby radishes
• the last of the snowpeas
• lots of herbs - oregano, thyme, parsley, basil, mint and bay
• 1 fennel bulb
• lettuce leaves
• rocket leaves
• celery leaves
• a solid bunch of celery stalks
• a bunch of young sweet beetroot
• a big handful of  lemon leaves

I also raided my stashes of the chillies from the freezer from last summer's glut, opened  new jars of my rocket fuel chilli sambal and my sweet chilli and tomato jam and dug into the home made strawberry jam and lemon marmalade.

These ingredients have gone into all sorts of food:

• broccoli oreccietta 
• lamb kofte with mint and wrapped in lemon leaves
• roast beetroot and mint salad - one of Suburban Tomato's recipes that is now a regular on my menu
• fresh green salad with loads of different leaves, herbs and fennel
• radishes dipped into hummus
• vegetable juices with quite peppery celery
• piles of steamed snow peas

It's a nice time in the garden and on the plate. I am contributing this to Daphne's Monday Harvest list, there will be plenty of produce to look at there soon, when the earth turns a little more.

What are you enjoying eating at the moment with your home growns?

Harvest Monday - 8th October 2012

I am still harvesting a mix of winter and summer crops.

I am picking the last of my broccoli and cauliflower. I have only one head of broccoli left now - still maturing.  Most of my broccoli pick from here on will be side shoots.

I have savoy cabbages still in the bed and they will take a while longer. I am harvesting  big hands full of snow peas every second day but didn't manage to take any photos of them...

I am sneaking the tips from my new baby basil,

 the young leaves of parsley and the long stems of sticky thyme flowers.

And fresh bright beautiful baby radishes. 

Daphne's place has plenty more harvests to drool over, or will have when the earth turns a little more.

Spring in the patch

It's spring in the patch and here is what is happening.

Baby vegetables

I have just started to pick my first baby radishes of the season. I deliberately pick them small as this is the first thinning I do. I sow thickly and only thin when the first small round roots have formed. Then there is more room for the others.

Dipped in hummus don't you think?

Fruit on the way
The first of the tomatoes has set - this is a cherry. (Oh dear, it's a bit blurry!)

And Collette the finger lime is flowering like crazy and starting to set their tiny fruit. It will turn black soon and hopefully start to thicken. The fruit that set in March either fell off or was stolen by a curious currawong?

Flowers
I grow a lot of flowers in my vegetable patch,  I just like a little bit of colour and they do bring the bees.  Right now the violas are spectacular.

And my self sown poppies are just starting to flower.  I collected seed for these poppies many years ago now when I came a cross a deserted house with a wild garden in Tarcutta (or was it Holbrook?).We were on our way down to the Wangarratta Jazz Festival and stopped off for a rest and a coffee. The round dried heads of poppies were just beautiful and so I collected some. I didn't know what they would produce, but I love the colour of these blooms and the grey green of their foliage.

When they have dried off I collect some dried heads to take inside as a dried display and sprinkle the seeds where I want them to come up next year. They just keep coming up every year, where ever they want to regardless of my attempt to place them in certain locations. I try to make space for them each time as they are great bee magnets. The bees circle around and around inside the cup of the petals, it's funny to watch.

And my thyme is flowering, also bringing bees. They are such a delicate mauve. This bunch came inside and went into last night's meal.

The last of the snow peas
This is the third and last planting of my snow peas. There is plenty of really good fruit to come and plenty of flowers. But they will soon be finished and I will have to wait for the cooler season for them again. Heaven on a stalk.

Pests
You smell them before you see them and then when you see them you despair. Stink bugs.

I HAVE to do something about these blighters today otherwise there will be no limes. You can see them sucking the stems behind the newly set fruit.  They will be come the subject of an entire post.

And the lovely snail.

This poor lettuce was ravaged overnight! Turn your back and they slime out of their hiding spots and munch.

New life
It only took one warm day and the frogs got going!

Winter wrap - '12

Winter here in Sydney has been a season of two halves.  The first part of winter was decidedly wet and the second half quite dry -  a harbinger of the return of the little boy  El Nino? The last part of winter has also been unseasonably warm - I am not complaining....

Here are some of my observations from this winter.

Harvests

• cabbage - mine have been savoy
• cauliflower - these were fabulous
• broccoli
• snow peas
• spring onions
• lemons, lemons, lemons
• limes
• fennel
• rocket
• herbs - rosemary, thyme, oregano, bay and mint towards the late part of winter
• some chillies in the early part of winter
• some sunflowers in the early part of winter

What I have learnt

• lime your brassica patch lest you get mini caulies
• broccoli is less fussy liming-wise than caulies
• snow peas are heaven on a stalk
• my mint needs more winter sun
• never take your parsley for granted - it can lure you into a false sense of supply cause it lives for two years, but when it's time is up, it's up and you are left without even a sprig
• fennel loves lots of water - it will grow well without it and produce lovely bulbs, but when it gets water a plenty, the bulbs are fat and white and juicy
• plant more fennel in succession
• late winter chives are incredibly flavoursome 
• bok choi is pretty and easy
• brassicas planted in winter avoid the cabbage moth when they are babies but get the moth visiting in late winter - but by that time they are growing strongly and are little affected
• this year I was rubbish at having something to pick in late winter - I still have my second crop of brassicas in the ground and only now forming heads!
• prunning your citrus in late summer and again when the growth re-awakens is a good thing to do
• the beans you dried in summer are fantastic for winter meals
• baby rainbow lorikeets have black eyes and beaks
• lemon trees are sacred

Pleasures

• lemons all winter
• the beauty of a cauliflower
• seeing my first blueberries flower and form fruit
• thyme flowers
• the glut of lime flowers and miniture forming fruit
• the birds that visit my garden - rainbow lorikeets and currawongs especially
• Half-tail would be a comedian if s/he was a human

Harvest Monday - 27th Aug

Pickings are slim at the moment. To make it even worse, this week I picked the last of my spring onions, fennel and snow peas.

As ever, the snow peas have been a delight. They have supplied greens every second day for 4 months.  Most of the time we eat them just steamed and sometimes in the yummy Chinese-inspired  meals that the lad makes.

Very often the snow peas don't even make it in the back door.  Standing and the crop eating them as picked is a special pleasure.

As for the citrus, the lemons are still coming  but I also picked the last of my limes - some were very small.

Herbs are fairing better. In the last week I picked loads of thyme and rosemary  for all sorts of dishes.

I also got stuck into the mint which is starting to wake up again after the winter slow down.

Next year I really must plan better so I don't have such a hungry gap. Bring on spring!

More harvests are over at Daphne's place.